


come out (and level up)

by myillusionsgone



Series: but we keep pushing on and on and on and on [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Gen, Miraculous!Alya, Peacock Miraculous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 16:03:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6572764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myillusionsgone/pseuds/myillusionsgone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the first step on a long road. — alya césaire </p><p>Out of the shadows <strike>of her training hall</strike> and into the light - Paris just gained another heroine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	come out (and level up)

Alya Césaire was slowly going out of her mind. Coming home after an akuma battle to update the ladyblog and to find a box in the mail for her had been one thing. To open the box and to find a bracelet in it had been something she had taken in stride as well. But by the time she had opened the box and a kwami who had introduced himself as Shazuu, she had started to feel slightly out of her element. And when he had declared that from now on she would become a hero in the style of Ladybug and Chat Noir (just with a nicer suit), she had been clinging to her desk as if it was a lifeline. 

She had always liked to think that she had been prepared for everything that could happen. She had learned from her early experiences (back when Ladybug and Chat Noir had just started) and by the time they been joined by Turtle, she had figured that the one thing that she would never be prepared for was to actually find out their identities. 

Shazuu, however, had appeared to prove her wrong. Because although she had joked about wanting to become a hero herself one day, she had not been prepared to actually be chosen for the same line of work. She had never thought herself to be someone who would be chosen for this sort of higher destiny thing, but it had happened and it had thrown her off for weeks. In fact, she was still not sure whether she was  _ truly  _ meant for this.

After all, she had been happy where she had been, happy with her blog, happy with chasing the heroes all over Paris. She had been less happy with the broken arm (one that Ladybug’s cure had not fixed because she had fallen  _ after _ it had been casted) and she had begrudgingly admitted that Marinette had a point that these close calls might be a sign for her to keep a bit more distance. And the blogger had tried, had gotten more careful because although she had downplayed it in front of her friends, she had been scared the moment she had lost her footing, and she knew all too well that if Turtle had not thrown his shield in the right moment, she could have broken more than just her arm.

(For example: her neck.)

But then, Shazuu had appeared to bring change, roughly a week after her arm had been freed from the cast. And for a moment, she had been simply excited. She had wanted to storm out the moment she had been alerted that there was an akuma attack, to join the fight and to be part of something greater, of something that mattered. Only that Shazuu had held her back, had reminded her that there was a learning curve for these things and that she might want to know the basics of  _ how to be the holder of the Peacock Miraculous  _ before jumping into the fray.

Sadly, he had been right. 

She had needed more time than just five minutes to get used to all of this, to the transformation, to the powers, to  _ everything _ . Well, not to the idea of facing akuma. She had been closeup and personal with plenty of them at this point. But days of preparation and training had turned into weeks, and she had started to wonder if she would ever be ready. And one day, she had started to ask Shazuu what else it would take for her to be ready to go out and join the fight, a question that regularly lead to— 

“As long as you ask me, you aren’t ready,” the kwami said idly, reaching into the bowl filled with muesli. She had been relieved when she had learned that he was a  _ low-maintenance kwami, compared to others  _ because she was not sure how she would have afforded food for her partner on top of all the other things a teenage girl needed — and life in Paris was hardly what most people would consider  _ cheap. _

Shazuu was probably  _ not _ going to win the prize for the most supportive kwami ever, as he was constantly reminding her that being the wielder of his Miraculous was very different from being Ladybug or Chat Noir. 

For example: transportation was not as easy as it was for them, because the suit did not come with a yoyo or a staff. She only had a fan that could  _ change  _ in many ways, all of which required a lot of focus. 

More focus than it took to make the wire of the yoyo or the length of the staff  **infinite** as her kwami had pointed out. She had asked how his previous partners had solved the problem, but his answer had been inconclusive as they had apparently lived elsewhere.

And she hated to admit it but Shazuu was right when he said that she would have to practice before she could be of any assistance to the current protectors of the city. And this annoyed her more than she wanted to admit, because she wanted to do  _ something _ when she had realised that she could do more to help now — only to be literally held back by a kwami that kept muttering about how he had not just picked a new Chosen to watch her die while asking someone called Tikki for more patience.

Alya groaned, not for the first time. She was not particularly keen on admitting this but the way she had struggled to get the fan to cooperate in a way her partner would approve of did not really spell out superhero material, no matter how much she would want it to.

“How did the — peacocks before me handle this?” she asked as she let herself fall back on her bed, running a hand through her hair and groaning.

“No matter who I chose, they always get a grip on it,” the bird kwami replied calmly as he sat down on her desk, leaning against the muesli bowl. He rarely spoke about her predecessors, she knew that. But she also knew that compared to other kwamis, he had not lost as many Chosen along the centuries. Although she had long guessed that many of his previous partners, as he called them, had been friends that he had lost along the way.

“What about the last one before me?” she asked as she chewed on her lip, resisting the urge to adjust her glasses for the tenth time in three minutes. “He—”

“He was younger than you,” Shazuu said softly, his voice strangely wistful, and she did not even manage to interrupt him because she had not wanted to ask for details about the man in whose shoes she was currently walking, she just wanted to know how he had solved the problem. “Much younger — that benefitted him, actually. Youth often equals willpower,” the kwami added with a light chuckle, one that made Alya sigh.

“You said you usually don’t pick them younger than me,” the blogger muttered as she lifted her head to look into his direction. Well, to claim that he had said it might be a bit of an exaggeration, it had been a slip-up and they had both acknowledged it as this. However, whether he had meant to say it or not; he  **had** said it.

“Creative, great work ethic, strong sense of loyalty — how could I not chose him early?” the kwami replied as he laughed softly, shaking his head.

“You were very fond of him,” she remarked, not a single trace of jealousy in her voice. She understood more about Shazuu than she wanted to, at times. It was a mixture of her investigative mind that always pieced clues and hints together and the fact that they spent so much time together. For example, she had long figured out that her immediate predecessor was still alive but had chosen to pass on the legacy.

In fact, it had made her consider to track him down and ask him for some words of advice on the fan, before she had realised that he could live  _ everywhere  _ on this planet. After all, a quick google search for Paupulo had revealed that he had made appearance in nearly each major city in the past twenty years, and she doubted that she could justify trips all over the planet to track the man down.

“He is the Chosen I stayed with for the longest time,” Shazuu said with a shrug, but there was something unsteady in his gaze as he looked at her. 

They both knew that he missed Paupulo, that he would have stayed with the man if he had not been needed elsewhere. And Alya respected this, just like she respected that even though Turtle had joined the fearless duo of Ladybug and Chat Noir, the original two were still accustomed to working without him. New dynamics needed time to develop, after all.

For a moment, she was silent and contemplated what she was supposed to do, how she would be able to solve the transportation issue, because what worried her more than not getting the fan to extend properly was losing her hold on her fan _falling too fast_ and without control, to crash rather than to land because of that. But for that problem, there had to be solutions. And finally, she knew how to erase that concern from the equation.

“Can we modify the suit?” she asked as she sat up, reaching for a notepad and starting to sketch. She was not Marinette, she was not good at drawing what she felt her suit needed, but she was certain that Shazuu would understand what she wanted.

From her desk, there was a chuckle as the kwami ate the last bits of his lunch, the wistfulness from moments before vanishing quickly. “And here I thought you’d never ask, yes, we can,” he said amusedly as he floated over to her, not even looking at the rough sketch as he sat down on the bracelet, a faint smile playing around the lips as her phone beeped twice, alerting her that there was an akuma.

The last time this had happened, in a similar situation, she had paled and her hands had shook. This time, there was something else inside of her, something that was keeping her from reacting as strongly to this. Maybe it was because Shazuu had promised her a suit that was hers rather than an  _ agglomeration _ of the suits he had given his previous Chosen over the centuries.

“Shazuu,” she said as she swallowed down her nervousness, looking down at him. “I think it’s time for me. Catch me, should I fall?”

“It really is,” he agreed slowly as he looked at her expectantly, ancient brown eyes glued to her face, before he squared his tiny shoulders and smiled. “I’ll give you a push, Alya, and I’ll make sure you stay in one piece … no worries.”

“Well, we should wing it, then,” she said with a roll of her eyes because did she have to sound like Chat Noir, but before she could say something else, Shazuu was sinking into the bracelet, shaking with laughter that was lost in the vortex of magic that replaced Alya Césaire with Paupulo’s successor.

Compared to previous transformations, to their test runs, this felt different and not just because it was a different suit. It was the way she felt about it. All her concerns about not being cut out for this kind of thing were washed away by the magic, leaving her with a sense of inner peace that was laced by enthusiasm. She knew — this sensation was possibly the push Shazuu had promised her. 

She looked into the mirror, smiling back at the reflection.

The suit had changed, moving away from the cut of Paupulo’s and towards something that was more  _ her _ . The colours were brighter than those she had seen on grainy, faded pictures that had been taken ages ago, and they made her look very different. Especially with the way Shazuu insisted on pulling her hair into a bun that would make a ballet dancer jealous, erasing further similarities between  _ this _ and her civilian self. And as the mask covered the mole on her forehead, she did not have to worry about someone recognising her easily.

To finally leave behind the streets where she had practised and trained and to go out and join the fight after all the weeks she had spent on preparing for this moment was exhilarating, even though she knew that she had to temper this thrill or it would break her neck. Extending the fan and watching how three of its feathers  _ zoomed  _ through the air, wrapping themselves around lanterns and roofs, allowing her to gain altitude was easy, so easy and natural that it felt like she was lifted not just by the magic of the Miraculous but also by all those who had come before her.

It gave her another rush — the realisation that she was walking in the shoes of great men and women, that she was part of that legacy now — and as she landed on the rooftop and oversaw the city, she had to catch her breath because it was  _ nearly too much _ . If this was what it had felt like for Ladybug and Chat Noir all the time, she did not doubt that Chat had told the truth when he had mentioned that sometimes, being a hero felt like a drug.

But Alya did not have the time to remember old interviews with the local heroes; she had places to be and heroes to assist. All contemplation could happen later on, after she had updated the ladyblog and everything appeared as usual. Because that was a point Shazuu had stressed: no one was to know that she was his new partner. And she had understood when he had told her that Hawkmoth — their enemy, the one who had turned her into Lady Wifi — could see through the eyes of his victims.

The fight itself was not too troublesome from what she could see from her perch on a roof, overlooking the area as she toyed with the fan that had shrunk back to its usual size. She could see Chat Noir and Turtle, focusing on the evacuation of civilians while they waited for Ladybug to show — which happened mere moments later when the flash of red swung by, rushing towards the others to join the battle.

Something inside of her seemed to nudge her further, to actually take the step over the line, the step that separated her from being a girl who trained  and fooled herself into believing that she could be a hero  into being a girl who actually did her part to save the day. Her hand shook as it held onto the fan and she counted backwards from ten, then from hundred. For a moment, she wished that Shazuu was with her, but he had always said that the moment she put on the suit and went out to fight, she could not hear him and would have to have blind faith in herself and in his choice.

Ironically, for all her overthinking, it happened in a way that felt natural to her. 

From her position, she saw Turtle throw his shield to Ladybug who was approaching the akuma with her Lucky Charmed item in her hand. Only — that left Turtle unguarded, something that the akuma wanted to use for an attack, hurling  _ burning honey  _ towards the green-clad hero. 

And this was what pushed Alya to move instantly, to swing her fan the same way she had at least a thousand times during the training Shazuu had insisted on. Feathers extended in the fracture of a second, spearing the honey and shielding Turtle who turned in the same moment as Ladybug’s heel crushed the possessed item — a bee smoker — under her foot.

As the white butterfly rose into the night sky, Alya released a breath she had not known she had been holding, staring back at the trio of heroes that was scrutinising her, possibly to figure out where she was friend or foe. She was a friend, certainly, but after the Volpina incident, two years ago, she could hardly blame them. Even if that had never happened, she would not blame them — trust had to be earned and so far, they knew nothing about her.

It was Ladybug who spoke first, right after returning the shield to Turtle who was still staring, dark eyebrows knitted together above the hand and yoyo in hand. “That was — impressive,” she said carefully as her blue eyes briefly flickered towards Chat Noir who nodded slowly. “Who are you?”

Alya had been prepared for this question ever since Shazuu had explained to her what would happen next, where her path would lead her. She had been there when Ladybug had answered the question for the first time, and she wondered if the other girl had felt the same way she did now, if her heart had beaten as loudly as Alya’s did right now. And because she had been prepared, it was easy to tuck the fan back into the belt, square the shoulders and smile.

“Paonne.”


End file.
